Native-specific active lifestyle stories were created to share what’s working in Indian Country.

During the spring and summer of 2017, NB3F worked with James Bell Associates to conduct in-depth interviews with three of NB3F’s community partners (grantees): Inter Tribal Sports (CA), the STAR School (AZ), and the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (NM). 

We are honored to share the stories of three community partners that utilize the strengths of their communities to increase youth participation in physical activities. The active lifestyle stories describe (1) the evolution of the programs or initiatives, (2) the resources each program needed, and (3) the impact the programs had on their children, youth, and community.

This story features Inter Tribal Sports (ITS), a nonprofit organization working to unify tribal youth and communities through structured athletic programs, while providing resources and creating a foundation of culture, leadership, and wellness. Headquartered in Temecula, CA, ITS currently serves children and youth from 20 tribal communities spanning a nearly 200-mile area across 4 counties in Southern California. The organization is governed by a board of directors with diverse representation from over 20 participating tribes and tribal organizations.

Unifying Tribal Communities

In 2002, a group of adults from four tribal communities in Southern California noticed there was a lot of division between the communities, and it was affecting the youth. At that time, kids were playing “rez ball” (a type of backyard basketball with no structure or rules), but the adults felt the youth needed something more structured that would keep them busy and bring them together. To address this need, they created the area’s first intertribal flag football league. Additional tribes began to show interest, and the football league evolved to include basketball and softball in response to the demand for more sporting options for tribal youth and families. The league was renamed Inter Tribal Sports. By 2009, ITS became incorporated, with multiple tribal communities helping establish ITS as a nonprofit organization with a board of directors and administrative team handling the day-to-day operations.

To date, ITS has offered a range of recreation sports leagues, cultural gatherings, and wellness activities to tribal youth and their families from as many as 22 communities in the region. Through quality activities, ITS strives to keep tribal youth active year-round, connect them with healthy activities and opportunities for personal growth, and expose them to the culture of Southern California’s Native peoples. The vision of ITS, as described by the executive director, is to create “new, healthy Tribal Leaders for the entire region . . . [that have] relationships [with each other] as a result of ITS programs.” The executive director and the board hope that youth participating in ITS activities will serve as role models and that they will one day sit across from each other at their council tables and “share [a] connection of healthy lifestyle, through sports, nutrition, and culture.”

Free and Inclusive Activity

ITS offers coed basketball, flag football, softball, soccer, All Stars Basketball, cheer, and running programs to tribal boys and girls aged 4–18. ITS offers these year-round leagues at no cost to the families. Typically, young people play for the tribe with which they are associated or enrolled, although some choose the tribe closest to their homes. In recent years, because ITS includes communities from all parts of Southern California, it has organized the sports leagues into three regions—northern, central, and southern—to reduce travel costs and time. Teams practice in their own communities at least twice a week and play a team from their region on the weekend. Then two to three times per season, ITS brings all the communities together for events like sports skills camps, league opening day, and championship game events for friendly, healthy competitions.

Through support from Marathon Kids and Nike N7, ITS started its running program last year. The program is designed to encourage youth and families to run together, and its goal is to get participating youth and adults to complete four marathons each year. Last year, 6 reservations participated in the program; next year, ITS hopes to have 12 or more communities join the fun. ITS plans to host at least one running event each year with all of the participating communities, and it hopes to expand the event to each of the three regions.

The leagues and running program are open to all youth, regardless of gender, skill, or experience level. ITS encourages youth who haven’t played, but want a chance to play, to sign up. One parent and coach described ITS as “one of those organizations that—[if] you want a shot, [they’ll] give you a shot, no matter what. You don’t have to be the best, you don’t have to prove yourself . . . just come and play.” This guiding principle ensures that children and youth living on local reservations have access to sports and to each other. As a result, ITS has become a “household name,” said the former executive director, who added, “it’s amazing to see . . . how many tribes know [what] ITS is, and they just expect their kids to participate.” For one ITS staff member, the experience has come full circle: his son and daughter play in the same league he and his brother joined when they were growing up.

In addition to the physical activity programs, ITS offers free enrichment programs focused on leadership, culture, and wellness outreach. The wellness outreach activities are offered at events to the whole family and promote healthy eating and drinking. ITS staff provide nutrition education that includes understanding nutrition labels, the intake of carbohydrates and sugars, the impact of nutrition on diabetes, and the importance of portion control; they also incorporate indigenous foods into the educational programs by providing samples of cuisine from all different regions. Last, wellness outreach efforts teach families how to refuel after playing sports, and ITS puts this knowledge into action by providing free healthy snacks and beverages to kids during the ITS sports games through its outreach booth: Rez Dogg Refreshments. Rez Dogg is ITS’ mascot. His backstory is that he started out as a wild “rez dog” that ran loose, chasing things and eating trash. One day, he decided to make a lifestyle change and began eating healthy and being physically active. Rez Dogg comes to all ITS games to promote and share his healthy lifestyle, and all of the families love him. ITS is also in the process of developing a leadership program, which it hopes will complement existing programs and involve peer education, personal development, and community service.

Sharing and Practicing Culture

ITS’ integration of culture into its programming reflects a tradition of sharing between the tribes in the region. Historically, tribes in Southern California came together for games, trading, gatherings, and ceremonies; however, more recently, tribes often come together only to mourn at a funeral or to celebrate a birthday. ITS seeks to uphold the traditional values of unity, reciprocity, generosity, and mentoring by bringing tribal communities and different generations together in good ways to focus on health, wellness, and community through its programs and events.

The structure of the games allows for and encourages cultural practices and traditions. For example, one parent said, “There are some players or some teams that get blessed by somebody coming out there with the sage . . . Some people meditate before the game.” By allowing the time and space for these cultural practices to occur before games, youth and adults not only are exposed to other tribes’ traditions but also may be inspired to practice their own on the field. Many teams also count off in their language during team huddles and then say a word in their language or the opposing team’s traditional name. A league site supervisor said he teaches his players “culture is respect. Respect not only yourself but the people around and respect the elders, respect Mother Earth, and respect each other.” In addition, ITS starts its Opening Day and Championship Game events with an elder or representative from the host tribe providing an opening ceremony or blessing and a performance by the Kumeyaay bird singers and dancers. ITS also hosts one or two cultural gatherings each year, where as many as 100 ITS youth come together at one reservation to learn about different tribal cultures in the region, including language, foods, traditional crafts, art, music, and songs. These events are taught by local tribal members who possess special knowledge of their community’s cultures.

Community Resources Underpinning Inter Tribal Sports

The work of ITS would not be possible without the support of the board members, coaches, tribal leaders, parents, community members, external partners, and dedicated staff and volunteers. Both former and current executive directors express that the importance of this unique collaboration cannot be overstated. The former executive director also said, “Working with so many tribes with so many unique aspects about each one, whether it be their community . . . their location . . . their recreational facilities, without the support of each and every one of those tribes and tribal leaders, which then carries over to the board representatives, I don’t think ITS would even be in existence today.” Both executive directors feel strongly about community involvement and the importance of the board comprising relatives of participating youth and representatives from each tribe—a component that makes ITS so distinctive.

ITS also benefits from the parents and relatives of the participating youth, as these individuals volunteer as coaches and site supervisors. In these roles they lead practices, help set up games and events, and assist with scorekeeping and additional parent involvement at the games. One parent described the responsibility by saying, “I have to be here like an hour, an hour and a half before the games so that we can set up all the popups, chairs, field equipment, and everything like that . . . And you know, it’s a lot of responsibility, it’s a lot of time.” He said he found the work rewarding and that involving family members created a more comfortable learning environment for youth athletes.

ITS also attributes its success to the resources that each tribal community contributes. Some communities have large, high-quality recreation facilities that can be used for Opening Day and Championship Game events, which must support multiple games at once; other tribes provide ITS teams with large, well-maintained soccer fields and multicomplex softball fields. Sharing these resources supports those tribes that lack such facilities, enabling tribal youth from communities with less resources to join in quality athletics and meet other young people.

External organizations provide additional support to ITS programs. Funders include NB3F, Nike’s N7 Fund for Native American and Aboriginal Youth, and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.

Measuring Program Success

Assessing the success and impact of the program is important to ITS. Each year, staff gather feedback from coaches and ask participants what they like most about participating in the sports leagues and how ITS can help them reach their goals. Staff have also collected information on the amount of time spent being physically active and body mass index scores and other health data from youth. Culture is a big component of ITS’ programs, and coaches and mentors use observation and their knowledge of the programs to explain how efforts to infuse culture are affecting the youth. ITS has found that participation in the sports leagues increases year after year, which is a clear indication of the program’s success.

To strengthen evaluation efforts, ITS staff would like to capture the organization’s impact on health, social and emotional development, and academic performance. ITS would like to use these data to compare impact across seasons, leagues, and years. Staff plan to share this information with the tribes, so each team can use the data to strengthen its programs and meet the needs of its community members. ITS is developing a comprehensive evaluation and data collection plan with support from the California Rural Indian Health Board (CRIHB) and is exploring opportunities to partner with local universities to collect data and assess impact.

Here are some of the ways ITS has made a difference for tribes in Southern California:

• Teaching youth about their culture and the culture of neighboring tribes—ITS provides an opportunity for youth to learn about their own culture and cultural practices and the traditions of nearby tribes. Staff feel this knowledge has a lasting impact on participants. One founder noted, “At one time there was a lot of drug addiction, a lot of these kids they weren’t getting along. So now what I see is togetherness . . . they’re helping each other . . . the language, the culture, everything. They come together . . . and share their music, their stories, their songs.”
• Instilling positive qualities in Native American youth—ITS activities seek to instill in participants a range of values, including leadership, respect, self-improvement, and self-confidence. The former executive director noted ITS strives to teach children and youth the foundations for cultural behaviors and expectations, including “how to socially interact and be respectful of your elders, and how to say thank you appropriately if you ask something of someone.”
• Encouraging a lifelong commitment to physical activity among youth—ITS teaches youth the importance of continuing to be physically active as they get older. The former executive director views ITS as “working upstream—getting and informing kids and providing resources to kids . . . so they are less likely to [face health challenges] as adults or elders.” She feels keeping youth active year-round may lead them to “grow into physically active adults and physically active grandparents that are modeling that physical activity should be one of the number-one priorities . . . at any stage of life.”
• Motivating healthy eating habits—ITS has heard its wellness efforts are creating healthy lifestyle changes among participants. The executive director shared reports of youth making decisions to change their eating habits, read food labels, and exercise portion control. This is especially important for those young people who are approaching their teenage years—the time when they can make more choices about what they eat.
• Improving academic performance and attendance—School staff, parents, and coaches feel ITS has improved the attitudes of students and their attendance at school. The executive director has received testimony from parents, who say, “Because of ITS, our children are getting better grades in school . . . before they didn’t want to go to school; now they’re up and ready to go to school and their report cards are A grades.”
• Promoting family bonding and adult physical activity—Family members often sign up for ITS activities together, with parents and grandparents commonly volunteering to coach their child’s team. The result is multiple generations spending time together in a fun, positive, and active way. One staff member said ITS is “trying to really encourage the idea that our entire lives are meant to be physically active. And it’s really great to see that a lot of our parents now are more engaged physically with their kids.”
• Keeping youth busy, active, and happy—ITS gives children and youth quality, structured activities for after school and on the weekends. One youth said, “I’m thankful for them . . . letting us do active things, because I think without ITS, it would kind of be . . . boring, different. Because ITS, it gets us busy and instead of doing something like staying home playing a game, we can come out here and play.” He said the program makes him feel happy because he’s playing a lot of sports and gets to see his friends. Another participant said he started with ITS because his parents wanted him to be active, but he keeps coming back because it’s fun, it’s competitive, he gets to play with other tribes, and he wants to stay active. The former executive director said she felt a similar sentiment watching the number of participants increase season after season: “[The] bottom line is . . . are the kids having a good time when they’re playing? And that, we see, and we feel every day.”
• Positively affecting the broader community—The board of directors’ vice president said, “ITS has had significant impact on our entire tribal community. This has been attained through the positive outcomes with sports participation and other opportunities ITS has to offer. In addition to this, I feel ITS has united the entire region and facilitated . . . the reconnection of our reservations and other tribal communities.”v

Native-specific active lifestyle stories were created to share what’s working in Indian Country.

During the spring and summer of 2017, NB3F worked with James Bell Associates to conduct in-depth interviews with three of NB3F’s community partners (grantees): Inter Tribal Sports (CA), the STAR School (AZ), and the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (NM).

We are honored to share the stories of three community partners that utilize the strengths of their communities to increase youth participation in physical activities. The active lifestyle stories describe (1) the evolution of the programs or initiatives, (2) the resources each program needed, and (3) the impact the programs had on their children, youth, and community. For more information about the featured community partners or their programs, please contact Michelle Gutierrez at michelle@nb3f.org.

The third story in the series focuses on the STAR School, a public charter school serving primarily Native American students living near Flagstaff and Leupp, AZ. The STAR school opened in 2001 and currently serves a maximum of 140 students from preschool through eighth grade. STAR School is known for being the first all off-grid, solar- and wind-powered charter school in the country, and it prides itself in providing place-based, culturally responsive education.

A Children-Inspired Program

As part of its focus on healthy living, the STAR School has long participated in the Navajo-Hopi Athletic Junior High League that brings together schools in northern Arizona. When the league decided to start a pee wee division for children as young as kindergarten, the preschoolers at the STAR School took notice and expressed their interest in running. The STAR School saw an opportunity to instill a love of physical activity at the earliest age and launched the Pee Wee Running Club for preschoolers (children aged 3– 5).

The STAR School Pee Wee Running Club brings together preschoolers’ natural desire to be active with their interest in sports that are normally reserved for older kids, to teach them healthy living skills and traditional Native American practices. The club meets two to three times during the school week for about 90 minutes after classes let out. The group meets throughout the school year, except for during the winter months, when it gets too cold to run outside. Participants start with stretching, go for a 2- to 4-mile run/walk around the school, and end with a cool down and core and leg workout. The coach creates several routes around the school, of varying distances, and each meeting she picks the distance that the group will strive for. The children often run/walk in pairs or groups of four based on their speed, but the coach always tries to have them finish together, telling the runners, “Nobody came in first, nobody came in last; we all came in together.”

Culture of Running for Native Americans

Running is culturally significant to tribes in northern Arizona, and that importance is integrated into the running club in a few ways. The club has had parents come to talk with the children about the cultural significance of running to the Hopi and Navajo tribes. For the Hopi, tribal members historically ran for practical (e.g., hunting, transportation) and ceremonial reasons. Hopi people felt running “banished unhappiness, strengthened the body, and rejuvenated one’s energy.”¹² The Navajo traditionally view a morning run to the east as a way to wake up the body, greet the morning sun, and get all the body’s energies ready for the day. The coaches also teach the children that running is inherent in their bodies because they are Native—that their bodies are capable of running and they are expected to run as a part of their culture.

Coaches also encourage the children to run so they are prepared for the Navajo Puberty Ceremony, a ceremony dedicated to celebrating the maturity of girls. Each morning during this four-day ceremony, the young woman who has gone through puberty runs to the east as the sun is rising, and then runs back. This practice ensures the woman will continue to be strong and active throughout adulthood. Often a group of children and sometimes adults run after the young woman, yelling encouragement to make sure she keeps running. Young women who go through the ceremony are called Kinaalda, meaning the embodiment of Changing Woman, a Navajo deity. While the ceremony is for young women, young men are also involved. As the coach explains to the boys, “When you’re chasing Kinaalda, you can’t pass her because, you know, you have to let her get her stride, and you have to learn how to breathe to keep up with this person.”

Teaching the cultural significance of running to the children aligns with the way that culture is infused into all aspects of the STAR School’s programming and curriculum. In addition to the Pee Wee Running Club, the STAR School encourages healthy living by providing and teaching about healthy food and beverages. In another program, the school has the students prepare traditional Navajo meals once a month and the staff provide food demonstrations to the families, with the goal of encouraging healthy eating. They also encourage students to eat fry bread in moderation, explaining that although fry bread was given to Navajos during the Long Walk[1] as a means of survival, it isn’t good for their bodies. The school promotes healthy beverages and cultural traditions by not providing soda on campus. When explaining to students why they don’t have soda at the school, the coordinator relates, “A long time ago, Navajos didn’t have access to soda . . . they drank water . . . they made Kool-Aid out of sumac berries . . . they just added honey to the sumac, and they drank that.”

Sustaining the Pee Wee Running Club

The running club relies heavily on existing resources at the school. The club is staffed by one adult and only needs land to run on, snacks, and water; however, finding a volunteer to coach the club can be challenging due to existing obligations for teachers and parents. The school is now searching to fill this position and is reaching out to former STAR students as possible coaches. During running club, the students are encouraged to stay hydrated and are fortunate to have access to well water from the Coconino Aquifer, which lies about 1,400 feet below the school. The water is treated with UV light when it is pulled from the ground, and the students love the taste of it. The club is also fortunate to exist in a close-knit community where the coaches often know the parents of children in the running club and can use those relationships to encourage and sustain participation. Also, one community member has run several marathons and often volunteers at and sponsors youth running events.

In addition to these community assets, the club receives support from partner agencies. The Indian Health Service unit in Winslow, AZ, often comes to the school to assist with fitness testing and health fairs, and provides incentives for participation, such as water bottles and pedometers. Another partner is the Navajo Coordinated Approach to School Health, which provides diabetes prevention education and activities at the school, such as promoting engaging in 150 minutes of physical activity per week. These health activities and resources, coupled with the Pee Wee Running Club, create a culture of health and wellness for children at the STAR School.

Capturing the Club’s Impact

The school has measured the success of the Pee Wee Running Club through observations and surveys. In the past, surveys have asked children about their satisfaction with the club and their eating and activity habits at home. They have found the children like the running club because it’s fun, it’s an opportunity to socialize with friends, and it’s competitive. The club receives a lot of positive feedback from children, parents, and grandparents. A former coach said she can see the results of the club when the children start losing weight or running longer and faster. She also measures the success of the program by how many “repeaters” come back each year. In the future, the school would like to supply runners with digital fitness trackers to allow them to see exactly how many miles they’ve run throughout the week or how many calories they’ve burned while running. These devices may also encourage the children to be more active at home.

Here are some ways the Pee Wee Running Club has made a difference for students at the STAR School:

• Increasing physical activity outside of the club—The school staff have noticed that the children who participate in the running club often run and race around the playground on their own time. One staff member said, “I see them racing . . . around the playground, making their own courses. And they’re like, ‘I’m checking my breathing.’ We teach [them] how to check their pulse rates, and I still see them doing this on the playground, even off-season when we don’t have anything going on.”
• Increasing activity among family members—Presenting running as a traditional and healthy activity motivates children to be active when they’re at home and to encourage their family members to be active with them. A former coach said she would tell the children, “Okay, it’s the weekend. Make sure you guys, at least, put a mile in with your grandma, grandpa. Try to get something, even a quarter of a mile.” Then the next week she would ask them about their activity at home, and they would tell her which family member they ran with. One girl even said she ran 8 miles with her aunt. Another staff member said a parent told her, “My daughter is encouraging me to . . . run with her. As a result, our entire family has decided to start doing these . . . 5K runs, starting out small.” And now the families are participating in longer races like marathons.
• Improving the children’s health and confidence—A former coach feels the running club helps children lose weight. She recalled, “Once I had this little boy, he was so excited . . . because he had lost so much weight that he said, ‘My mom can pick me up now.’ And even . . . his grandma was telling me that his mom was so happy. He was so happy that he got smaller clothes instead of the big-boy clothes.” In addition, participants said the running club makes them feel “good” and teaches them to “try [their] personal best.”
• Creating better students—When asked if she had any advice for other schools, a staff member replied, “Any kind of physical activity that is implemented by a school is going to have a positive effect on the students’ overall health . . . When they’re healthy, they pay more attention in class. When they’re healthy, they absorb more of the information that we’re giving them . . . those are the kinds of benefits that I think we do see [from] this.”

[1] In 1864, the U.S. Army forcibly removed Navajos and Mescalero Apaches from their homeland and made them march to Fort Sumner, about 300 miles away.

Ideas, Examples to Reduce Sugary Drinks Among Native American Children at First Healthy Beverage Summit

From a junk food tax, to traditional teas, to changing shopping habits, participants in the first summit discussed ideas, challenges and current local and national progress in reducing consumption of sugary drinks by Native American children.

“Water is sacred. Sodas have become part of our tradition. It’s time to decolonize your drink,” said Andrea Pepin, Zuni Youth Enrichment Project nutrition education coordinator, quoting a fellow colleague.

Pepin was among 125 people who attended Notah Begay III Foundation’s Healthy Beverage Summit to find ways to reduce the consumption of soda, sports, fruit drinks and other sugared beverages among Native youth. The sold out February 8th gathering at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M., was the first of three for grant recipients, health advocates and others interested in promoting water and breastfeeding as a first choice in Native communities.

The event was part of the Water First! project, a 2 ½ year NB3 Foundation initiative partnering with nine Native communities across New Mexico and the Navajo Nation to combat sugared drinks. Click here for a full listing of the grantees and a summary of their projects.

The work becomes more eminent as sweetened drinks now represent the biggest source of added sugar in American diets. The beverages have been linked to obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, and liver and heart disease.

“We are having a serious epidemic of both obesity and diabetes,” said Keynote Speaker Dr. Jim Krieger, Executive Director of Health Food America, a national nonprofit that uses science to drive change in policy and industry practice.

He said obesity in America has been growing since the 1980s, with an increase in diabetes in the 90s. “We’re seeing it level off a bit but we’ve never seen anything like this grow so big so fast,” Krieger said.

Native Americans have been disproportionately affected. In New Mexico alone, 50 percent or one out of two Native American third-graders are either overweight or obese, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.

What’s causing the epidemic is that Americans simply are consuming too much sugar, according to Krieger. Forty-six percent of sugars and added calories in American diets come from sweetened beverages, which have no nutritional benefit. In one study of Navajo students, 86 percent of girls and 93 percent of boys were drinking at least one soda daily.

Read about how one of our grant recipients is reducing sugary drinks

 One way to reduce consumption is through education, such as the warning labels put on tobacco products, or decreasing the availability of sugary drinks through policy, such as requiring supermarkets to put healthier beverages near the cashier isles.

Another way to diminish sugary drinks, Krieger said, is an added tax on the beverages, something Berkeley and Mexico have done. Berkeley, Calif., the first U.S. city to implement such a tax, saw a 21 percent decrease in consumption in low-income communities only after five months. Mexico, the first country in the world to pass a tax, saw overall consumption decline 12 percent and a 17 percent reduction in low-income communities.

The Navajo Nation, the first tribe in the country to pass a 2 percent tax on “junk food,” food with no nutritional value, projects $2 million annually from its tax, which will go to each of the 34 chapter houses, local governing districts, for community wellness projects, such as farming and community trails.

Closing Keynote Navajo Vice President Jonathan Nez, a leading example of how Native people can live a healthy lifestyle after dropping 300 pounds and becoming an avid runner, said the Diné and others need to remind themselves about the traditional ways of overcoming adversity, fighting what he called the “monsters” of the 21^st century—diabetes and heart disease.

The Diné used to get up early, heard sheep or farm in the scorching desert sun, and survived the Long Walk, a 300-mile trek Navajos made from their homelands to an internment camp. These traditions or events provide a great teaching of overcoming and resilience, Nez said.

“You have the ability to change your life for good,” Nez said, sharing his story as an obese Shonto Chapter community leader who would try to encourage young people to live healthier lives until a teenager’s words tore into him, “Every time we see you, you get bigger and bigger.” The comment was the impetus for Nez to start walking, which turned into a love of running. He recently started training for an ultra marathon at 100k.

“When you change and when your family changes, you have the ability to change your community. You cannot help somebody if you cannot take care of yourself,” he said.

One big step in taking care of ourselves and our children is to look at how often and how much we consume sugary drinks, said Justin Kii Huenemann, NB3 President and CEO.

“It is our hope that this summit and the ongoing work of the nine grantees are not only building education and awareness across a broad mix of stakeholders, but will in fact inspire individual, family and community-led changes,” he said.

Thanks to funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation, the NB3 Foundation plans to host the 2^nd Healthy Beverage Summit in 2018 building on participant and grantee discussions and ideas, and will continue to provide knowledge, resources and strengthen relationships needed to drive innovative ways to reduce the consumption of sweetened beverages among our Native American children.